Disk Storage Disk Storage • Different types of disk storage: • The smallest addressable unit on a disk storage is a • Hard disks block. → Mountable disk • The size of a block is usually 512 bytes. → Non-mountable disk - Winchester disk • The storage area for a block at the disk platter is called • Floppy disks a sector. • Optical disks - CD, DVD • Old disk storage devices were addressed with cylinder number, track number, sector number. • Modern hard disks use Logical Block Addressing (LBA), that is the block address given to the controller do not tell exactly where on the platter the block is stored. • It is possible to read or write several contiguous blocks with one command. This makes it possible for the file system code to define a file system block size that is some multiple of the sector size. 1 2 Rotational speed Disk Formatting Two variants: Before a new disk can be used, information must be written to the platter that defines the tracks and sectors. This is • Constant angular velocity (CAV). The rotational called low-level formatting. speed of the disk is constant. To use the platter in an efficient way, the outer tracks have more sectors than • Low-level formatting fills the disk with a special data the inner tracks. Used in hard disks. structure for each sector. • Constant Linear velocity (CLV). The density of bits per • The data structure consists of a header, a data area track is uniform. To get constant data rate the rotation (usually 512 bytes) and a trailer. speed is increased as the head moves from the outer to • The header and trailer contain data such a sector the inner tracks. Used in CD and DVD. number and an error correcting code (ECC). • CD and DVD differs from hard disks in that they use a Low-level formatting also performs remapping of bad single track that spirals out from the center to the periphery. blocks. • Modern disks are low-level formatted at the factory. 3 4 Disk I/O Hard Disk 1 The data transports between a disk storage and primary memory is usually performed by a DMA (Direct-Memory-Access) controller. The DMA controller Data for Seagate WREN 6 HH SCSI Model 94241 (Modern can control the data buses in the computer independent of 1994). the processor. Capacity 502 Mbyte To initiate a DMA transport, the disk driver writes a Spindle speed 3600 rpm command block to the controller. Average rotational delay 8.33 ms Number of surfaces 7 The command block contains the following information: Sector size 512 bytes • Type of operation. Tracks per surface 1756 ≈ • Address at the disk. Sectors per track 79 Transport speed (internal) 15-22 Mbit/s • Address in primary memory. • Number of bytes to transfer. Seek time: • When the transport is finished, the DMA controller Average: 16 ms generates an interrupt. • Single track: 3 ms • The time for the operation to finish consists of three parts: Max seek: 24 ms • Seek time. • Rotational latency. • Transport time. 5 6 Hard Disk 2 Disk Scheduling Data for Seagate Barracuda Model ST328040A (Modern • Due to the long seek time, it is common that the 1999). processes makes requests to the disk quicker than they Capacity 28 Gbyte can be serviced. Spindle speed 7200 rpm • The effect is that a queue is created at the disk driver. Average rotational delay 4.16 ms • The simplest way to service this queue is FCFC (First Number of surfaces 8 Come First Serviced). Sector size 512 bytes • If the requests are independent of each other (that is a Tracks per surface (estimated) 16283 random sector is addressed), FCFS will generate many Sectors per track ≈126 long seeks. Max transport speed (internal) 323 Mbit/s • The effect is that the full bandwidth of the disk storage is Seek time: not utilized and the average time to complete an • Average: 8 ms operation will be longer than needed. • • Single track: 0.9 ms By sorting the queue in a better way, the average operation time may be improved. • Max seek: 14 ms Goals for a disk scheduling algorithm: • Short expected value for the operation time. • Short variance for the operation time. 7 8 SSTF - Shortest Seek Time First SCAN The SSTF algorithm selects the request with the minimum • The head scans forth and back across the disk. seek time from the current head position. • The request that is closest in the current direction is Gives shorter average operation time than FCFS. serviced first. Problems: • Then there is no more requests in the current direction, the direction of the head movement is reversed and the • Can lead to starvation. servicing continues. The text book calls this algorithm • Gives big variance in operation times. LOOK, and reserves SCAN for the hardly used • The inner and outer tracks get worse average wait time algorithm that always seeks to the outer or inner track, than tracks in the middle of the platter. even if there is no request to that track. • SCAN is the same algorithm that is used in elevators. • SCAN gives less variance in operation time than SSTF. • There is still some discrimination of tracks near the edges, as the middle is passed twice as often as the edges. • In principal the algorithm could lead to starvation, if new requests continually arrives for the current track. 9 10 N-step SCAN and C-SCAN Scheduling Algorithms - Evaluation Then is a disk scheduling algorithm expected to improve • N-step SCAN works as SCAN with the exception that performance: the requests to service during the next scan is decided each time the direction is reversed. • If there is a high intensity of requests to random tracks. • Requests arriving during the scan are queued, and are serviced during the next scan. Then is a scheduling algorithm of no use? • N-step SCAN prevents starvation and gives somewhat • If the load is so low that no queue is created. less variance in operation times than normal SCAN. • If the requests are presented to the disk driver in the • In C-SCAN requests are serviced only in one direction. order they need to be serviced. For example when Then the arm has reached the outermost track with a reading a sequential file that is optimally located at the request, the arm is moved back to the center in a long disk. seek, and continues with the request closest to the center. • C-SCAN gives the same expected operation time for all tracks. • The expected operation time is a little worse than for normal SCAN, since some time is lost in the long seeks. 11 12 Optimization of Rotational Latency Boot Block and Partitions When reading or writing a random block, the average Information about the disk partition table need to be stored rotation latency will be 1/2 of the rotation time. in block 0 on the disk, as this is the only block that can be This may be almost as big as the seek time, but it is not located without knowing anything about the disk layout. possible to use a scheduling algorithm to optimize the Block 0 also stores a simple boot loader. rotational latency for three reasons: For PC machines information about four partitions is stored • Most disks have no command to read it’s rotational in MBR (Master Boot Record) in block 0. For each of the position. partitions the following information is stored: • The track placement for a specific sector is not known • If it is a primary or extended partition. for disks that use logical block addressing. • The partition type. • If the requests are for random blocks, the probability of having many requests to the same track is very low • Address to the first block in the partition. unless the disk is severely overloaded. • The partition size. • One of the partitions is marked as boot partition. However, file systems do try to allocate sequential blocks in a file in rotational optimal order. The first block in each partition is a boot block for that Every command to the disk is finished by an interrupt, that partition. takes some time for the operating system to process. Trying to read consecutive blocks on the disk with separate commands will usually result in the next block being missed and incur a delay of one rotation. Thus rotational optimal placement is every second block. Modern disk controllers do track-at-once caching. This makes it possible to read consecutive blocks without a delay. 13 14 Disk Storage Performance Improvements Disk Reliability • The access time can be improved by using block • Say that the mean time to failure for a disk is 100000 caches in the primary memory or in the disk controller. hours (very optimistic). • The bandwidth for reading large amounts of data from a • If an installation is using 100 disks, the mean time to single disk cannot be improved because it is failure for any of the disks is 100000/100=1000 hours fundamentally limited by the disk bandwidth. which is 41 days. • A way to improve the bandwidth is to use multiple disks. • Thus, although disk reliability is usually not a big • In order to improve the bandwidth for a single file it has problem for a home computer with one or two disks, It is to be located so that consecutive blocks are located at a big problem for servers with many disks. different disks (striping). For maximal performance the • RAID can also be used to improve reliability. disks have to be connected to a single controller and be • The simplest way is to write identical data to two disks.